I feel a little embarrassed asking for help, but I feel I must do so. I am 21 years old and currently in a relationship with a wonderful woman (26 years old) for about 3 months now and I am extremely happy, BUT, there is one thing that is eating away at me. I feel that I am being a selfish person by saying what is bothering me but here it goes; before I met her I was a virgin and after a while we began talking about her past and I was informed that she was previously intimate with 7 other men, and one of them she was married to for about 4 years. I know all this is in her past but for some reason I get extremely angry when I think about this. Can you please give me some advice to make the anger go away.

Thank you for your time.

Hi - thanks for being stronger than your embarrassment and writing in. Let's take a look at embarrassment for a moment, as that's where you began, and that's what's really up here for you. What is embarrassment? If we feel embarrassment, we are feeling ashamed of ourselves in some way, right? So we are judging ourselves. What is judgment? judgment is not love - therefore it's an illusion, a false conclusion or belief. judgment comes from not feeling safe, or being in fear, always. So, let's look at shame. What is shame? Shame is a false belief that we are not good enough. When we believe that we are not good enough, we feel vulnerable, open to attack, and afraid. To hide the fear, we get angry, and we usually throw that anger onto the person or situation we think is "causing" us to feel the shame or embarrassment. We get angry at them because we are not willing, or able yet, to turn it around and see that it's our own fears that are at the root of it all - our own beliefs about ourselves. All the situation or person did was light up for you, or trigger, those already in there fears. So, instead of facing that, we project our anger onto someone or something else so that we don't have to deal with it inside of ourselves.

You have a fear or belief that you aren't up to snuff - the fact that she has had more experience than you brings up the thought for you, out of fear, that maybe you aren't as good as her other lovers. Your mind tells you (out of fear) "Maybe she won't think I'm as good as they were or love me as much. I can't compete." So then you get scared, and then you get angry to hide your fear. The Truth is, there is no such thing as competition, competition is an illusion, as we are all perfect and doing exactly what we need to be doing, being exactly whom we need to be. We are where we're at, perfectly, to grow and learn what we came into this lifetime to learn, right? And - if you think about it, how can God be less than itself in any way? As we are all aspects of God, or Divine universal energy, there is no better and there is no worse. It's all equally God, correct? Can't be dissected, can it?

You are terrified to face this fear, the fear that you're "less than", as you are afraid it may be true since you've held this belief for a long time. So, you are afraid to look at it, and you get angry as a way to hide from it. The fact that you wrote in though, despite all of this, shows me that you ARE now ready to move on to the next level of inner strength and awareness and deal with it. That's great! Here's the loop we ALL get caught in when we project our fears onto someone or something else.

The cycle of an erroneous core belief loop:

You feel guilty.

You judge something or someone, including yourself ("I'm not good enough").

You feel guilty about doing that.

Then you become fearful that you will be punished or attacked (but YOU are the one punishing and attacking yourself by holding this belief!).

You feel shame, and you hide it all away so you're not aware the issue is really even there, that it's yours.

So you, think others are causing you to feel this way. In order to get away from the shame, or deal with it in some way, you blame others. This is called projection. You put it out on someone or something else.

You feel guilty about doing that and the loop goes on.

Just ponder on this for a while and see how it applies to you, till you get an "aha!"

To get out of this loop, you have to change your erroneous belief about yourself. I invite you to read 'The Laws of the Universe' (see the link at the bottom of this page). Sometimes it takes reading it a lot before this new level of information sinks in. It's pretty high level stuff. You will find the steps in there about how to re-program an erroneous belief. Also, it would be useful for you to find out when the origin point of this belief began. That way you come to see how it got created, and how, if it's anything other than Love, or Loving yourself, it's an illusion, as Love is the only thing that's real.

So - sit quietly in meditation, and ask about this origin point gently, and ALLOW whatever first impression you get to come in and accept it, without judging it. Just ask "What is the origin point of my belief that I am not good enough?" Then just become receptive to whatever answer you get. You can also do the same thing for any other false belief you have that is causing you difficulties. Not judging is the key here. We all have misunderstandings of truth, or what's really going on - that's what we all came in to learn about.

Sometimes, as we clear away the false belief, the emotions that were stored up behind that belief, the pain of holding that belief and all the situations that got created out of it, the yuck that we experienced from having this belief, usually comes up. If you feel a lot of strong emotion with this, that's good, as long as you understand where it's coming from and you don't act on it or take it out on yourself or on anyone else. It's just pus releasing from the wound so it can heal. Just let it flow out of you, just like you'd sit and watch a storm pass through. Don't get caught up in it. Just let it pass through you.